New York recap

Its 11 am and I am leaving for JFK airport at 4 from Connecticut, where I’ve been since Friday. I’ve been here since Friday and we spent last night (sat) in Manhattan. Friday we went to nice Italian dinner; had a very good calzone and some tasty wine. Then we walked some café’ where the people tried to hard. I mean the waiter was wearing like one of those Jamaican hats and had dreadlocks…and he was white. I had a piece of chocolate cake which was good, despite the liberal infused atmosphere that in addition to our waiter included some really bad music and tables too low for our chairs.
Saturday we drove down to the city. Went on a pretty cool lecture/walking tour about Jews in New York since the 1650s and their impact on Jewry and America as a whole, and specifically some Jews in the financial market like Belmot, Goldman-Sachs, etc…The beginning when he was talking about the Brazilian immigrant Jews in the 1650’s was more entertaining than the latter talk about the financial impact.
That night we went to an awesome steakhouse, Keens, with a bunch of my family members. From my mom’s side my cousin Devin, who is a sophomore at NYU, met us, and on my dad’s side, along with my aunt who I am staying with, a few more distant cousins ate with us. My cousin Lloyd and his 2 children, and his son’s wife who is pregnant! Dinner was really good, but I should have ordered one of their classic “mutton chops” (a mutton is an older lamb). We had a nice bottle of Argentinean Red Wine and I ordered a mammoth salad wedge drenched in bleu cheese which was outstanding, but I felt really fat afterwards. I chose a Kansas Strip (on the bone) which was good, but paled in comparison to the famous mutton chop. Lloyd had a 20$ shot of scotch and my aunt had a 15$ martini, but I guess those are the prices in NY.
After dinner my cousin Devin and I met up with one of my longtime friends who I know from home and his buddy. They are living in Brooklyn and it was really good to see my buddy who I have seen only once in the last year or so. We went to a hookah bar somewhere I think in West Village, crazy prices for drinks so I passed. My buddy surprised me and paid for the bill, so I could have drank for free but I wouldn’t want to be a shnor like that anyways. Afterwards, we went to my cousin’s friend’s dorm room. It was really nice with a full time security guard, kitchen in the room, and even wood floors. Sure beats Hubbard. Her friends seemed pleasant and drunk so I said goodbye to her and me and my friends from Brooklyn left.

Yesterday I slept in and then we went to the Yankess game where they beat Seattle 8-2. It was exciting at the begining but the last runs were scored in the 4th inning. Because closed roads and traffics, it took 2.5 hours to get back to Connecticuit as opposed to the 45 minutes it would usually take. Pretty crazy, but it is awesome to be at Yankee stadium in its last season of existence. For dinner my aunt made a truly marvelous dinner: Cesar salad and tomato-mozzarella-basil salad. And for main course she made lamb chops and asapargus. Of course we drank another bottle of dry red wine which was outstanding. The best dinner are always home cooked.
Now I am really pumped for Israel. I am nervous as I have never been away 3 months and I am very close to my family. But I am going to have a great time and hopefully learn a ton.